AYSCOUGHE, William (1620-95), of Osgoodby Grange, Thirkleby, Yorks.

The Ayscoughes, or Askwiths, had been zealously Protestant since Elizabeth’s reign, when many gentry families in the North Riding were still church-papists.25W. Brown, ‘Procs. in 1912’, YAJ xxii. 212-3. The family’s principal residence, where they had been tenants since before the Reformation, was at Osgoodby Grange, some four miles from the town of Thirsk.26Yorks. Deeds ed. M.J. Hebditch (Yorks. Arch. Soc. rec. ser. cxi), 131; Vis. Yorks. ed. Foster, 487. Ayscoughe’s father, William Ayscoughe senior, raised the family’s standing, and strengthened its puritan pedigree, with his marriage to a daughter of the godly exchequer official William Cholmley†, who was a brother-in-law and close friend of the noted lawyer and future parliamentarian grandee, John Pym*. It was possibly Ayscoughe senior who was instrumental in securing Cholmley’s return for Thirsk to the 1626 Parliament, although perhaps a more likely patron was Sir Thomas Belasyse† (father of Henry* and John Belasyse*), who was the brother-in-law of Cholmley’s kinsman and friend Sir Richard Cholmley† (father of Sir Hugh Cholmeley* and Sir Henry Cholmley*).27Mdx. Peds. 140; HP Commons 1604-29, ‘William Cholmley’.

When his father died in 1635, Ayscoughe’s wardship was granted to William Cholmley, Pym and Dr. Ralph Brownrigg, a prominent Calvinist minister who had married Pym’s niece.28WARD9/208, f. 168. It was probably either Pym or Cholmley who was responsible for arranging Ayscoughe’s marriage in 1641 to a daughter of the godly Bedfordshire knight Sir John Burgoyne* of Sutton.29Infra, ‘Sir John Burgoyne’. Ayscoughe was almost certainly the ‘Mr Askew’ who was among the official mourners at Pym’s funeral in London in December 1643.30CSP Dom. 1642, p. 504. His contacts among the parliamentarian leadership also included the Lincoln’s Inn lawyer, Samuel Browne*. In October 1641, a few months after his marriage, Ayscoughe had assigned several of his properties to Browne and another gentleman for the sum of £1.31C54/3265/19. Either Ayscoughe (who was described as of Sutton) was levying a fine on these properties, or conveying them in trust to Browne, for purposes unspecified.

Given his godly family background and links with Pym, it was not surprising that Ayscoughe sided with Parliament in the civil war. Indeed, it was reported that he had been commissioned as a captain of parliamentary horse by late 1645, although there is no record of his military service.32OPH xxii. 179. The ‘Captain Ayscough’ who served in and around Berkshire during the mid-1640s was apparently the Lincolnshire parliamentarian Edward Ayscoghe*.33Supra, ‘Edward Ayscough’.

Ayscoughe and Colonel Francis Lascelles of Northallerton were returned for Thirsk as ‘recruiters’ on 6 October 1645, in place of the royalists John Belasyse and Sir Thomas Ingram. With the Belasyse family a spent electoral force by the mid-1640s, Ayscoughe had been able to build a strong interest in the borough as a prominent local landowner and as lessee of the rectory of Thirsk.34Supra, ‘Thirsk’. He was named to only eight Commons’ committees between late 1645 and Pride’s Purge in December 1648 – too few to reveal any firm indication as to his political allegiances or interests in the House.35CJ iv. 376a, 616a, 689b; v. 6b, 14b, 62b, 195a, 522b.

Yet unlike most of the Yorkshire recruiters who took the Covenant – which Ayscoughe did on 31 December 1645 – he was probably a Presbyterian in both politics and religion.36CJ iv. 393a. There are several features of his parliamentary career which, taken together, suggest his alignment with the Presbyterian interest at Westminster. In the first place, there is his appointment to committees in 1646 and 1648 for investigating the London radicals, to bear down upon the pay of senior officers, and on an ordinance for the stricter observance of the sabbath.37CJ iv. 616a, 689b; v. 522b. Secondly, there is his pattern of attendance at Westminster. Thus he did not seek leave of absence in 1647 until 17 July, when it had become clear that the Presbyterians’ attempt to disband the New Model Army had all but failed.38CJ v. 248a. And he does not appear to have returned to the House until March 1648, when the Presbyterian interest was beginning to revive at Westminster after the blows it had suffered during the second half of 1647. Thirdly, there is his appointment on 29 March 1648 to request Thomas Hodges, vicar of Kensington, to preach the next fast sermon.39CJ v. 519b; Oxford DNB, ‘Thomas Hodges’. A year earlier, at the height of the Presbyterian ascendency in the Commons, Hodges and the zealous Presbyterian minister Richard Vines had been requested by the House to preach against the growth of ‘errors’ and ‘heresies’ (or, in other words, the growth of religious Independency and sectarianism).40T. Hodges, The Growth and Spreading of Haeresie [sic] (1647, E.379.1); A. Hughes, Gangraena and the Struggle for the Eng. Revolution (Oxford, 2004), 379. But as a resident of Kensington by the late 1640s, Ayscoughe would have been an obvious choice to approach Hodges, regardless of any congruity in their religious sympathies.41C54/3449/9; Gentles, Sheils, Confiscation and Restoration, 41.

Ayscoughe received his last mention in the Journals on 28 July 1648, when he voted against an amendment to a question concerning Parliament’s intended treaty with the king that would confine the negotiations strictly to the Isle of Wight. Those opposed to a personal treaty feared that once in London, Charles would be able to dictate his own peace terms. The tellers in favour of the amendment – the Independents Sir Peter Wentworth and William Heveningham – had seemingly won the division by one vote, when the House was informed that ‘Mr Askew, having been in the gallery at the putting of the question, did afterwards withdraw into the committee chamber and had not declared for whom he had given his vote’. Asked to declare which side he supported, Ayscoughe gave his vote for the noes, whereupon the division was tied. The Speaker then cast his vote with the noes, and the question passed in the negative.42CJ v. 650a.

Yet if Ayscoughe was indeed aligned with the Presbyterian interest, he was not among those secluded at Pride’s Purge in December 1648 – perhaps because he was too insignificant a figure to worry the army and its friends. He abstained from sitting in the Rump, and by early 1650 he had been omitted from the North Riding bench and assessment commission. His evident distaste for the Rump and its proceedings notwithstanding, he purchased Osgoodby Grange from the trustees for the sale of church lands in 1650.43C54/3446/14; C54/3449/9; Gentles, Sheils, Confiscation and Restoration, 7. Restored to the magistracy by late 1653, he was an active j.p. under the protectorate.44N. Riding QS Recs. ed. Atkinson (N. Riding Rec. Soc. v), 159, 257; (N. Riding Rec. Soc. vi), 3, 5, 7. In October 1656, he and several other North Riding magistrates, including Thomas Harrison II* and John Wastell*, wrote to the lord protector in support of a parish minister who had been threatened with legal proceedings by his ejected predecessors.45CSP Dom. 1656-7, p. 144. There is no reference to him in the Journals to corroborate the claim that he had resumed his seat in Long Parliament by time it was finally dissolved in mid-March 1660.46The Grand Memorandum, or a True and Perfect Catalogue of the Secluded Members of the House of Commons sitting 16 March 1659 (1660, 669 f.24.37).

Ayscoughe received a knighthood in December 1660, probably as part of the crown’s attempt to curry favour with the Presbyterian gentry.47Shaw, Knights of Eng. ii. 232. Yet despite this honour, he was regarded with considerable suspicion by the Restoration authorities in Yorkshire. Not only was he removed from local office, but also, in November 1661, the lord lieutenant of Yorkshire (the duke of Buckingham) gave orders that Ayscoughe’s mail be opened on suspicion that he was involved in ‘very dangerous plots and designs contrived by several persons disaffected to his majesty’.48HMC Var. ii. 117. Whether Ayscoughe was indeed involved in such activities is unclear, although one of the conspirators in the Yorkshire Rising of 1663 alleged that Ayscoughe had offered to commit his entire estate of £400 or £500 a year to help prosper the venture.49Add. 33770, f. 31. Ayscoughe certainly shared the godly religious views of the plotters and, although he attended Anglican services, retained the ejected minister John Denton as his domestic chaplain.50Calamy Revised, 163. Denton, a Presbyterian, obtained a licence to preach at Osgoodby under the declaration of indulgence in 1672 (by 1689, the dissenting minister Thomas Coulton, another Presbyterian, was preaching in Ayscoughe’s house).51CSP Dom. 1671-2, p. 568; N. Riding QS Recs. ed. Atkinson (N. Riding Rec. Soc. vii), 102; Oxford DNB, ‘John Denton’.

Ayscoughe came out of political retirement in 1681, when he was again returned for Thirsk. He almost certainly sided with the whigs in the Oxford Parliament, although he left no trace in the Journals. The propagation of the gospel was Ayscoughe’s passion, not party politics, and in October 1682 he had the temerity to set up a ‘tickling [preaching] house’ in the cathedral close at York. A tory correspondent of Sir John Reresby† commented sourly that ‘a numerous troop of precious saints assembled there on Wednesday to carry on the work’.52W. Yorks. Archives (Leeds), WYL156, Mexborough mss, Reresby corresp. 21/1: Thomas Fairfax to Reresby, 14 Oct. 1682. Given the close connection in tory eyes between dissent and sedition, it is not surprising that in August 1683 (a month after the Rye House Plot to murder Charles II), Ayscoughe’s house was searched for arms. Nothing incriminating was found.53HMC Var. ii. 174.

Ayscoughe died, without surviving issue, on 9 October 1695 and was buried at Thirkleby on 12 October.54C33/299, f. 423v; Thirkleby par. reg. Although he made a will in about February 1691, there is no record that it was entered in probate.55C33/293, f. 515v. However, most of the contents of this lost document can be deduced from evidence given in a chancery case concerning title to his personal estate. A patron of godly clerics to the last, he left £200 to ‘poor, indigent Protestant ministers’, as well as legacies for the maintenance of a preaching ministry in several local parishes. In addition, he set up a trust of £150 a year for educating ‘hopeful young men ... to fit them for preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ according to the now doctrinal part of the articles of the Church of England as now established by law in the Protestant religion and not otherwise’. These young men were to be chosen by his trustees, who included the dissenting ministers Thomas Coulton and Noah Ward. All of his trustees, however, ‘being engaged in other affairs, they thought it inconvenient to take upon them the trust’. He made bequests totalling almost £3,000, and his legatees included Edward Stillingfleet DD, bishop of Worcester (who had been appointed rector of Sutton in 1657 by Ayscoughe’s brother-in-law Sir Roger Burgoyne*) and the prominent Yorkshire dissenting patron Sir John Hewley*. Having outlived his five children, he divided his estate between his two granddaughters.56C33/293, ff. 515v-516; C33/299, ff. 423-4; C38/275, unfol.; Oxford DNB, ‘Edward Stillingfleet’. Ayscoughe was the first and last of his line to sit in Parliament.